He was still sore in all kinds of places—he’d been bounced around pretty good in that crash at the Super Gee and his safety harness had left welts across his chest and shoulders. It felt good just to stand in the sunlight and take in Sallytown. He knew the town pretty well, since he’d spent a year patrolling it for State before he got reassigned to pursuit. It was a sleepy Main Street kind of town, population around three thousand, just like thousands of others scattered across the South, and the main square had what most main squares in the South had, a redbrick town hall with a Confederate flag flying on the pole outside, a flowered central garden with a statue of a Rebel cavalryman in the middle, and live oaks all over the place, every one trailing wisps of Spanish moss. On the far side of the square was the Episcopalian Church of Christ the Redeemer, built in 1856, rebuilt in 1923 after the lightning strike and the fire. It was a white wooden structure with a needle-sharp spire painted silver.
